Wounded veteran in spotlight

Wounded veteran Cory Remsburg had met President Barack Obama three times before Tuesday night— once in France and twice since a roadside bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on his 10th deployment. Number four was at Obama's State of the Union address, when the Army Ranger inspired the emotional high point of the evening.

Craig Remsburg, father of Army Ranger Sgt.1st Class Cory Remsburg, center, watches as his son acknowledges applause from first lady Michelle Obama and others during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday . (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Toward the end of Obama's policy-heavy address, the president gestured toward the uniformed man from Phoenix seated next to first lady Michelle Obama and described the difference between the Remsburg he'd met the first time— "sharp as a tack"— and the wounded warrior his fellow soldiers found face-down in a canal, underwater, with shrapnel in his brain.

"The next time I met him, in the hospital, he couldn't speak; he could barely move," Obama said to the now-silent crowd in the House chamber. "Over the years, he's endured dozens of surgeries and procedures, and hours of grueling rehab every day."

As Obama spoke, the heads of lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and Cabinet members swiveled to their right and upward toward Remsburg, who had been clapping all evening by patting his right hand on his chest. His left hand lay curled in a brace.

Remsburg, seated beside his father, Craig, is still blind in one eye and struggles on his left side, Obama said. But he's slowly learned to speak, stand and walk again. He's been awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

"Like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg never gives up and he does not quit," Obama said.

Everyone in the chamber stood and applauded Remsburg for a minute and 44 seconds, the most sustained applause of the evening.

Wearing a bow tie under his uniform, Remsburg stood, waved and gave a thumbs-up. Obama returned it.

As Obama made his way out of the House chamber, Remsburg was helped up the steps of the gallery by his father. What was left of the crowd turned toward him again and applauded.

Three times, mainly by chance and in very different circumstances, Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg has met President Obama.

They were introduced near Omaha Beach in France in 2009, when Sergeant Remsburg was part of a select Army Ranger group chosen to re-enact a parachute drop for celebrations of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in World War II. The second meeting came less than a year later at a military hospital outside Washington, where Mr. Obama was stunned to see among the wounded troops from Afghanistan a familiar young man — now brain-damaged, a track of fresh stitches across his skull, and partly paralyzed.

The third time was two weeks ago in a private visit in Phoenix, where Sergeant Remsburg did something that neither Mr. Obama nor military doctors would once have predicted: he stood up and saluted his commander in chief.

There was more. Grasping his walker, “Cory took a step, then another, and then another,” Mr. Obama said later, “all the way across the room.”

In more than four years in office, Mr. Obama has met privately with nearly 1,000 men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet his repeated encounters with Sergeant Remsburg stand out for bringing a president face to face with the resilience of the wounded and the brutal costs of the wars.

Former President George W. Bush and other commanders in chief paid many visits to the wounded, but Mr. Obama’s intersections with one warrior’s life-altering path are unusual. Aides could not name any other wounded service member whom Mr. Obama has met three times, nor any other who first stood before the commander in chief in battle-ready prime.

For Sergeant Remsburg, the meetings have been “very humbling,” he said in a phone interview last weekend. For Mr. Obama, the soldier has come to personify the challenges endured by more than 50,000 men and women wounded in the two wars of the last decade, many facing recoveries that “will last a lifetime,” as the president recently said.

The two men first met on June 6, 2009, when they were introduced in Normandy at the D-Day commemoration. The parachute jumps by the seven Rangers were over, and they were back in their uniforms and medals. Photographs were taken, and soon Sergeant Remsburg, who had served in Iraq, was off for a 10th deployment, to Afghanistan.

Four months later, on Oct. 1, he was facedown in a canal near Kandahar, thrown by the force of a quarter-ton roadside bomb, shrapnel penetrating his brain and right eye. He spent the next three months in a coma, through operations at military hospitals in Afghanistan, Germany and Bethesda, Md., outside Washington. Through the winter of 2010, he was at a veterans’ hospital in Tampa, Fla., where he slowly regained consciousness.

In April 2010, he returned to Bethesda for surgery to rebuild his skull. One day that month, Mr. Obama came for his annual physical and to visit patients. Entering a hospital room, he saw a photo on the wall — of himself and Sergeant Remsburg in Normandy — and did a double take, looking at the broken man lying there, and again at the strapping soldier in the frame.

“Cory still couldn’t speak, but he looked me in the eye,” the president said later. “He lifted his arm, and he shook my hand firmly. And when I asked how he was feeling, he held up his hand, pulled his fingers together and gave a thumbs up.”

Mr. Obama gave that account two months later, at the June 2010 convention of the Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta, drawing cheers from several thousand combat veterans.

One of his speechwriters, Terry Szuplat, who had drafted the president’s speech to the disabled veterans, stayed in touch with the soldier’s father, Craig Remsburg, over the next three years. So when Mr. Obama was again due to speak at the disabled veterans’ annual convention, this month in Orlando, Fla., the speechwriter worked with the president and the Remsburgs to include an update on their son’s progress.

Sergeant Remsburg had recently moved home to Gilbert, Ariz., near Phoenix, after two and a half years in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Mr. Obama was scheduled to be in Phoenix four days before the veterans’ convention. Realizing the coincidence, White House aides arranged for Sergeant Remsburg to go to the school where the president would speak.

Reporters with Mr. Obama were not informed about his rendezvous in an empty classroom, but the following Saturday, the president told the disabled veterans all about it.

“I suspect it won’t surprise you to know that for Cory, the years since he was injured have been very hard,” Mr. Obama said, describing dozens of surgeries on the soldier’s brain, skull, eyes and lungs. He spoke of skin grafts and “grueling” daily hours of physical, occupational and speech therapy.

Sergeant Remsburg, he said, “had to learn the simple things all over again — how to speak, how to write his name, how to throw a ball.”

But he added, “The young man I had seen in that hospital bed, unable to speak, barely able to move, this time he was in a chair sitting up — alert, smiling, talking. And then, he wanted to show me something.”

Sergeant Remsburg reached for his walker and, with help from his father and stepmother, stood up. “And he looked at me,” Mr. Obama said, “and he gave me a sharp salute. He said, ‘Rangers, lead the way!’” — the force’s motto since D-Day. (He also said “Sir,” his father said.) Then the Ranger crossed the room with his walker.

The conventioneers erupted, even as Mr. Obama went on.

“The war in Afghanistan may be ending,” he added, “but for Cory and our disabled vets, the work has only just begun. Cory is 30 years old. His recovery — like so many of yours — will last a lifetime. But he won’t give up, because you haven’t given up. And when it comes to our work, to making sure that our nation is fulfilling its promises to the men and women who served and sacrificed, America cannot give up either.”

Sergeant Remsburg said in the interview that he wanted to walk for the president “to show him how far I’ve come.”

A day after Mr. Obama spoke of him to the disabled veterans, Sergeant Remsburg moved from his father’s house into one of his own nearby, with a full-time caregiver. Among other decorations, he directed the hanging of Ranger photos, including the one from Normandy.

He receives therapies up to six hours daily, Monday through Friday. And though he cannot move his left arm and is awaiting a retina transplant for his sightless right eye, Sergeant Remsburg rides miles on a recumbent bike on Sundays with a veterans’ group. He struggles to speak, yet he has begun giving short speeches about life as a Ranger. “Just because you are down, you are not out,” he said in a burst of words.

And he talks of coming to Washington: Mr. Obama invited him to meet for a fourth time, this time at the White House.

Last modified: January 29, 2014
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